October, 1909. 



American Vee Journal 



jars being filled here, and placed on 

 exhibition, will present a fresher and 

 inore sparkling appearance than when 

 honey has been bottled for any length 

 of time. Being specially equipped 

 right on the grounds for doing this, 

 makes it an easy matter. Thus, not 

 only heavy shipping expenses and 

 breakage of glass en route, together 



with the difficulty of obtaining suitable 

 containers, are done away with, but the 

 stuff will come on exhibition present- 

 ing a uniform and neat appearance. 

 This should appeal not only to the ex- 

 hibitors, but also to the Fair associa- 

 tions and their superintendents who 

 desire to create more interest in bee 

 and honey exhibits. 



Conducted bv J. 1.. B\KK. M.iunt J..y. 



Honey Crop and Prices 



Along with good crops, the Canadian 

 bee-keepers have had good prices as 

 well — truly a combination that even 

 the veriest pessimist could not grumble 

 over. Buckwheat honey shows a ten- 

 dency to be a little lower in price than 

 for a few years, this being explained by 

 the rather limited demand for dark 

 honey in Canada. While the clover is 

 sent in every direction, nearly all the 

 buckwheat goes East, so naturally the 

 market is more easily supplied for the 

 darker article. It has never been clear 

 to me as to why our biscuit factories 

 use no dark honey, as, over the line, I 

 understand that the National Biscuit 

 Co. and other concerns use large quan- 

 tities of all the darker grades of honey. 

 However, here in Ontario our biscuit 

 manufacturers will have nothing but 

 the best of clover honey if they can get 

 it, and when that is too high they send 

 off to Jamaica for logwood honey 

 which is quite a white article. 



Drouth and the Clover 



Some of those who are saying, " I 

 told you so," when the matter of drouth 

 killing clover is mentioned, would bet- 

 ter explain why Ontario has a real good 

 crop (barring a few localities) this sea- 

 son, after one of the worst drouths last 

 year that has ever been experienced. 

 To help them out a bit, 1 might say 

 that the most of the honey referred to 

 was gathered from the alsike clover. 

 However, it was not last year's drouth 

 that stopped the white clover from 

 blooming in this section, as last spring 

 the clover showed up as well as ever in 

 April and May. Since the latter end of 

 May, though, the drouth in Ontario has 

 been very severe and the clover never 

 came to the blooming stage. Alsike in 

 the cultivated fields stood the dry 

 weather better, and yielded very heavy 

 for a few days. The drouth this year 

 is worse with us than last season, as it 

 came earlier, before the fresh-seeded 

 clover got rooted, and now the result 

 is that here in our vicinity, at least, 

 prospects are slim for a crop of clover 

 next year. However, it is too soon to 

 borrow trouble, and perhaps there may 

 be enough for a crop of honey again. 



Anyway, worrying about it would do 

 no good, so we will keep on (as a bee- 

 keeper always does) hoping for some- 

 thing to turn up even if the clover 

 should fail. 



A Bee-Tight Honey-House 



Editor Hutchinson quite properly 

 tells the writer in the last Bee-Keepers' 

 Review that a honey-house should al- 

 ways be bee-tight, and he says that a 

 bunch of lath and a roll of building 

 paper will do the job cheaply. 



Agreed that the bee-tight house is a 

 good thing to have, yet there is no 

 question but that there are a whole lot 

 of apiaries in the country that have not 

 this requisite, and a number of these 

 bee-keepers get along fairly well with- 

 out any robbing, too, by using good 

 judgment in their manipulations. As 

 to the paper, I want none of it, as the 

 red squirrels are such a nuisance here 

 that past experience with the paper has 

 disgusted me with its use. At one time 

 I had a good-sized honey-house com- 

 pletely "peeled " inside of a week, and 

 two or three other times all of our 

 papering was ruined so as to be of no 

 use as a bee-excluder. 



It is easy to make a building bee- 

 proof, a little harder to make it motisc- 

 proof, and almost impossible to make 

 it squirrel proof. At the one yard in 

 particular I have to wage a constant 

 warfare against those little destroyers, 

 and while I dislike to kill them, yet I 

 find it almost the only thing that can 

 be done. Within the last ten days I 

 have caught two in traps, and there are 

 lots more still around the place look- 

 ing for trouble. 



A Good Buckwheat Swarm 



The chap who wrote that ancient 

 rhyme about a swarm of bees in July 

 not being worth a fly, either did not 

 know what he was talking about, or 

 else he never lived and kept bees in a 

 buckwheat section. I might as well 

 confess in justice to the ancient rhymer, 

 that previous to the past few years the 

 assertion was pretty true in our locality 

 in the majority of seasons. With such 



a negative value placed on a July 

 swarm, we might reasonably assume 

 that a swarm in August would be 

 still more worthless, yet on Aug. 13th a 

 large swarm issued at the Altona yard, 

 and it not only stored enough for win- 

 ter, but has put a little over .50 pounds 

 of honey in the supers as well. This is 

 my first experience in the matter of 

 " buckwheat swarms," and naturally I 

 am well pleased with this colony's good 

 showing. 



The yard in which this swarm issued 

 was very strong for the buckwheat, 

 only 4 out of the 60 colonies having 

 swarmed during the season, and the 

 average for buckwheat was 65 pounds 

 per colony. Not so very much, yet this 

 is the heaviest yield I have ever had 

 from that source since they started to 

 grow it in this section. What I was 

 trying to come at, was to show that 

 this young swarm actually stored more 

 honey from the buckwheat than was 

 the average in the yard, /. c, when the 

 amount stored in the brood-chamber is 

 taken into account. While I am glad 

 to cut out swarming as much as possi- 

 ble, yet I have always contended that 

 if a swarm issued at just the right time 

 as much honey will be secured as 

 though there had been no swarming; 

 and the bee-keeper is the richer by one 

 more swarm for each one that goes 

 through the program. But the trouble 

 is, that we cannot always have the 

 swarms at the right time, and so I sup- 

 pose we will continue to test non- 

 swarming plans with varying success 

 in the future as we have done in the 

 past. 



The Long Tongue, Red Clover Fad 



Hurrah for the long-tongued bees 

 that will work on red clover! Now, 

 don't all speak at once and say we've 

 got them, else there will be so much 

 confusion that we will not know just 

 whom to buy our queens from. The 

 fact is, that nearly any bee-keeper in 

 this part of Ontario can {this year) 

 honestly claim to have bees that store 

 surplus from red clover, as about half 

 of the buckwheat (?) honey through 

 here this season has been gathered from 

 the red clover. 



We have been, and are at the present 

 time experiencing even a worse drouth 

 than last year, but owing to copious 

 showers just after the clover was cut 

 the first time, quite a heavy aftermath 

 was started. Whether because oi the 

 shortness of the tubes of the clo\«, or 

 because of their being extra full of 

 nectar, I know not. but be the cause 

 what it may, the clover is swarming 

 with bees gathering nectar and pollen 

 every warm afternoon. As I have Ital- 

 ians, blacks and Carniolans in the 

 home apiary here, I have had a good 

 chance to observe the dififerent races 

 as to how they work on red clover, 

 and after watching them for days on 

 the clover, as well as comparing super- 

 work, I have no hesitation in saying 

 that the long-tongue idea, in so far as 

 it refers to the different races, is pretty 

 much a humbug. 



On the flowers at work, no difference 

 could be seen in the numbers of bees 

 present, as all three races seemed to be 

 about equally represented. The Car- 



